Harrawood, Michael

John Milton’s Paradise Lost is a poetry text rife with economic thought that precedes the publications of the most prominent thinkers in modern economics. Centered mostly around ideas of Christianity, Milton’s work uses allegory and imagery to emphasize the economic dynamics that are embedded in religious thought. I will analyze Paradise Lost as a theoretical economic framework that consolidates the never-ending struggle between free-market capitalism and communism—represented by the Devil and God. Looking closely at key features of Christian theology and analyzing it through the lens of Milton’s work, I will relate key events in Genesis to modern economic theory.

Thomas Pynchon's novels have puzzled audiences for decades, in the same way his conspiracy plots lead his characters into labyrinthine networks of events and people. These two novels feature female detective protagonists pursuing elusive secrets and conspiracies while struggling with technological advancement that is altering the world they think they know. These detectives are Oedipa Maas in The Crying ofLot49 (1966) and Maxine Tarnow in Bleeding Edge (201 3). The Crying of Lot 49 is set in the Cold War mid-1960's, while Bleeding Edge begins in April of2001, and ventures through the events of September 11th, 2001. Pynchon places his detectives in these volatile eras so that they might serve to immerse the reader, enabling her then to understand the techno-social developments of the present. As the characters assimilate their new experiences into an intelligible design, so too does the reader need to augment his epistemological framework.

In Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights, both male and female characters have the ability to fluidly move between classes and display behaviors that far outreach their class rank. In this thesis, I argue that Bronte uses the fluidity of class to dismantle the layers of patriarchy within the novel and larger social structures. Nelly Dean is both the narrator and a lowly housemaid within Wuthering Heights, however despite her status, she is given many privileges within the house and has a distinct sense of agency. This is a subtle queering of class structures, however Heathcliff is able to gain a massive quantity of wealth and move from a lowly stable boy to a stately land owner; this is also despite the racial stigma of Heathcliff being introduced as an orphaned gypsy. Many characters move both up and down within class structures through gaining and losing capital; both social and monetary. Despite this attempt by Bronte however, while she is successful in disrupting the patriarchy, she is ultimately unsuccessful in dismantling it because it is primarily the male characters who are able to move up within the social scale.

This thesis will engage in the three crisis episodes that I call Don’t Do It moments in John Milton’s Paradise Lost, moments in which the poem suddenly turns into a
suspense movie. As in a slasher film, or even a mystery film, the reader responds
emotionally as the poem brings him or her to relive the seduction that leads to the fall of
man. I will argue that Milton deliberately organizes the entire poem around these
moments in Book IX in order to recreate the Fall in the reader’s mind, emphasizing it’s
unfairness and inevitability: the readers suffering for Adam and Eve’s sin. I will suggest a connection between the text and the reader by means of empty signifiers. Unlike Adam and Eve, the reader understands the meaning of the word ‘death’ and the powerful consequences they will face once they separate and fall.

In moments of great societal change the pastoral poem motif always seems to reemerge. Although the pastoral poem's intrinsic formulation—a latent yearning for a lost time and space—has stayed constant, the minuscule shifts in what constitutes this idyllic respite reveal a great deal about the era it was written. The notion of a Golden Age illustrates society's ideals and as such juxtaposes the banality of quotidian life with highly idealized aesthetical aspirations that the poet is attempting to escape through pastoral poetry. By focusing on different literary movements with particular emphasis on the Spanish Siglo de Oro and the British Romantic period I aim to demonstrate how the contemporary issues—i.e. political unrest and the burgeoning industrial revolution—shape different variations of pastoral poems that constitute the distinctive yet elusive national Golden Age.

Dr. John Dee, 16th century advisor to Queen Elizabeth, conducted a series of
mystical sessions to converse with angelic spirits in the early 1580s, asking a variety of
questions ranging from hidden treasures to the organization of the cosmos. At a glance
the experiments appear focused solely on the field of magic, separated from organized
scientific research or religious belief. I argue that Dee’s research within this period does
not separate the three from one another, but instead serves as a meeting point where
magic, science, and religion overlap one another. They are not separate discourses, but
instead constantly mingling as practitioners like Dee pursue knowledge. Christopher
Marlowe, a playwright of the 16th century, mirrors Dee’s research in his play Doctor
Faustus, ultimately condemning the pursuits of magic as fruitless and useful only for
one’s damnation.

The renowned French philosopher and cultural critic Jean Baudrillard, in his 1981 treatise Simulacra and Simulation, creates and defines the term “hyperreality” as “the generation by models of a real without origin or reality.” Utilizing this definition, this thesis analyzes the text and film versions of Bret Easton Ellis’s controversial postmodern classic, American Psycho, in conjunction with the anti-“Disneyfication” independent film, Escape from Tomorrow, as complex examples in fiction of the excess and ultimate consequences of American materialism that has developed since the 1991 publication of Ellis’s novel about the over-indulgent “yuppie” culture of the 1980’s. I argue that the main consequence of the practice of blind belief in the endurance and reliability of material signifiers for the protagonists of these works, Patrick Bateman and Jim White respectively, is the sacrifice of their identity to the machine of homogenized corporate capitalism.

Disneyland Park, which opened in Anaheim, California on July 17, 1955, has
been a fixture of American culture for over sixty years. Each of its themed “lands” are
constructed to embody the popular perceptions of an abstract idea, such as the frontier,
tomorrow, and adventure. Even areas based on specific locations are primarily invested in
representing places as they exist in the American imagination. Culture is dynamic,
however, and public sensibilities evolve. The constant struggle to maintain societal
relevancy and resonance has revised nearly every facet of Disneyland’s narrative since its
opening, in ways both subtle and substantial.

This paper will examine the significance of blindness in Oedipus Rex, King Lear, and Jane Eyre. In each of these canonical works, the character presents a moral infringement and consequently is castigated through the loss of sight. For Oedipus and Rochester this is a sexual transgression while for Gloucester, blindness is a reflection of his ignorance of his son’s duplicity. This literary commonality implements vision loss as a punishment for immorality. Yet, from this loss of sight also stems transcendence. Paradoxically, in losing their sight, the characters garner a greater sensory awareness and prophetic insight as Oedipus sees his future and Rochester experiences a telepathic exchange with Jane. This paper will also examine the portrayals of blind characters and how they reflect historic shifts in society’s conceptualization of the disabled community.

In the 1960s, the French Communist thinker Louis Althusser undertook to reorient capitalistic
societies toward realizing socialist ideals. However, Althusser envisioned a self-sustaining capitalist state
placing, through ideological state apparatuses, seemingly insurmountable limitations on constituents’ ideas
and actions. In brief, his characterization of social phenomena as revealing a constructed ideology favoring
the state, itself supporting the economy, seems to have contradicted his revolutionary goal. This thesis
argues that communication theory, as explicated by the Canadian theorist Anthony Wilden, provides a
framework capable of rectifying Althusser’s theory of the state to meet his goal of creating a society whose
citizens are free from state control. Althusser thought undoing ideological apparatuses began with their
identification, proceeded through their disruption, and concluded with their transformation. Wilden’s theory
of morphogenic systems, conceptualizing “resistance” to ideological structures as “noise” in the “signal” of
the state apparatus, shows that generating noise permits political actors to foster morphogenesis in a
“repressive” state.